ABOUT `THE POPE': HEAVEN HELP US

OWEN McNALLY; Courant Film CriticTHE HARTFORD COURANT

C A turkey by any other name is still a turkey.

That's the best way to sum up the merits of the would-be satire of the Vatican that is now called "The Pope Must Diet" but was originally called "The Pope Must Die." That original title for the feeble farce, which opened in Hartford last weekend at Cinema City, sparked a tiff last month that led to the renaming of the film not once but twice. Before the movie had its first wave of national openings last month, Miramax Films ran into trouble with the original title when it tried to place ads in the media.

The three TV networks and a number of metropolitan newspapers refused to run ads for the film because they thought the title might offend Catholics, said Jonathon Marder of Jonathon Marder and Associates, a New York public relations firm promoting the film.

"But the amazing thing was that there was absolutely no outcry whatsover from Catholic groups. But the media [are] so worried about outcries these days that they banned the title without checking.

"Rather than continue the controversy, Miramax eventually put out multiple ad campigns with the title `The Pope Must . . .' Miramax was willing to make compromises with any newspaper that had problems with the title. And, finally, to put the emphasis back on the film's being a comedy, rather than something that was trying to be serious, the name was changed to `The Pope Must Diet.' Currently, that's the title -- a funny title that emphasizes the film is a comedy," Marder said.

Whether the verb "die" is replaced with a series of cute dots or by the innocuous word "diet" does nothing to resurrect this unholy mess of a comedy that quickly expires after showing some small initial promise.

Robbie Coltrane, a rotund comic actor who's a sort of British version of John Goodman, gets most of the film's laughs, such as they are, as Father Albinizi, a country priest who, through a clerical error in the Vatican, is named pope.

The film's only other asset of note is Beverly D'Angelo, who, in a too-short but sweet cameo role, plays the woman Albinizi loved and impregnated before deciding to become a priest.

Albinizi becomes pope thanks to a dead battery in an elderly

priest's hearing aid.

The hard-of-hearing clerical cleric in the Sistine Chapel mishears the name Albini -- the real choice of the college of cardinals -- as Albinizi.

So Albinizi, the obscure padre who loves to fix cars, play rock guitar and pal around with little orphans, suddenly finds himself elevated to supreme pontiff, a position the modest priest finds dizzying.

And he finds it even more dizzying when he learns that the Vatican Bank is being used by organized crime and corrupt prelates to launder ill-gotten gains, including a fortune from dealing arms to Noriega-like dictators.

The new pope, who is called Pope David I, stands up to the corruption, roots out the sleazy Cardinal Rocco (Alex Rocco) -- a prince of the church who is a mix of Madison Avenue hype, slick con man and tinhorn gangster -- and Vittorio Corelli (Herbert Lom), a lunatic crime kingpin who wants to wear the papal crown himself.

Pope David finally drives the moneychangers out of the Vatican Bank and delivers a fire-and-brimstone sermon against those who have polluted the Holy See.

Pope David's sole ally in his crusade against corruption is an ultra-hip priest called Bish, who is played by writer and director Peter Richardson.

Bish has somehow come into possession of an incriminating computer chip that can destroy the cabal plotting to use the Vatican as a veil for its evil purposes.

The miraculous computer chip and the offbeat Bish character pop up out of nowhere, grafted gratuitously to the plot. Such strained, poorly developed devices are typical of the slipshod way the film was put together.

There are so many disconcerting loose ends and so many sophomoric or just plain stupid gags that the movie never generates any comic momentum.

There might have been enough of an idea here for a funny 10-minute skit on "Saturday Night Live." But as a full-length movie, it doesn't have a prayer.